We purchased a Dyson Stowaway vacuum cleaner recently and I was pretty excited to see what it could do. I can confirm without a shadow of a doubt that Dyson vacuum cleaners suck, in the best possible way!

I started out in our living area and attached the hard floor surface head and set to work vacuuming our tiles. I was immediately shocked by the fact that it has so much suction, you have to actually work to push it around even over the hard tiles – something that I’d never felt before in a vacuum cleaner. The next thing that I noticed was that the head had a very even suction, pulling in dirt right out to the edge of the head and even outside it by approximately 2cm.

After feeling just how much suction it had on the tiles, I couldn’t wait to see what it’d do with the turbine head on the carpet. After sorting the tiles out, turbine head attached and into the carpet we go – wow! It sucks against the carpet so hard that it leaves marks in it and we have a short pile carpet. You really need to work quite hard to push it around on the carpet, however the rotating bristles within the head and great suction was just tearing the dirt and kitty fur out.

I wasn’t sure if the 9Kg weight of the main unit was going to be a lot or a little, however in practice you don’t even notice it. I’m not sure if it is our particular Dyson or all of them, however they come with a particularly long nose on them – allowing you to cover a significant area without having to move the main unit. This greater range of movement may have been on the of contributing factors as to why I didn’t notice the weight of the vacuum cleaner.

While the Dyson isn’t going to win the silence award compared to some of the other bagged vacuum cleaners, it is still reasonably quiet. While Claire was vacuuming the carpet in our living room, I walked into the same room with Hugo asleep in my arms and he didn’t stir. I don’t think he’d stay asleep if you took the unit into a bedroom, however in a larger space the noise dissipated quickly.

They say first impressions last and so far, the Dyson vacuum cleaner certainly left a good impression. Only time will tell how well it is built and wears, however after seeing a video of James Dyson literally dropping and throwing around various Dyson vacuums to prove a point – I don’t expect we’ll have any problems on that front.

This morning we ventured down to our local Harvey Norman and investigate what vacuum cleaners were on the market. We were helped by a young bloke named Phil who was very helpful and knowledgeable about all things vacuum cleaner related. I was impressed with their range of vacuums that Harvey Norman had actually, everything from lightweight upright vacuums that might be useful in a showroom, traditional style vacuum cleaners, various quality bagless vacuum cleaners and right the way down to the heavy duty gear.

Our current vacuum was a low to middle of the range one, that we happened to pick up on a bargain a few years ago. It has served us well, however if we had of paid the retail price for it – I’d have been disappointed by its performance and build quality. As such, I wasn’t all that inclined to go with another low/middle of the range vacuum unless someone could convince me it was really worth it. That left us with the middle to top of the range cleaners and they came in bagged and bagless versions. We opted for another bagless vacuum cleaner as Claire and I feel they are a little easier to deal with. Of the plethora of bagless vacuum cleaners they had on offer, we ended up choosing the Dyson Stowaway vacuum cleaner.

The Dyson vacuum cleaner we purchased falls into the barrel category, so you pull it along with you (as opposed to push like an upright) and it looks like a barrel with wheels. The Dyson has quite a few good qualities which we liked:

• surprisingly quiet (at least half the noise of our current one)
• has a HEPA filter, which is great if you have allergies (we don’t but a nice to have)
• weighs about 9Kg, which isn’t light but isn’t going to do your back in either
• telescopic handle to help it store easily
• turbine head to get that extra bit of dirt out of your carpets
• 2 year warranty, which we extended to 6 years

I’m strangely excited to vacuum the house with it this afternoon to see what it can do.

After having to wait over five weeks to have my original CoolerMaster power supply replaced due to a fault (the fan was making wurring noises), I’ve gone to install the replacement and I’m still having problems – just different ones.

I’ve gone through the installation process for the power supply once more, plugged everything back in, pressed the power button and I receive a very high pitched squeal from my machine immediately. It’s not the kind of noise you get when you plug your computer components together incorrectly, like a beep beep style noise – it’s different again and not something that I really appreciate my machine generating as it’s quite piercing.

Thinking I’ve missed something really simple (and I’m not ruling that out yet), I’ve re-read the manual for the power supply and the Asus P5E motherboard to make sure I’m plugging the right leads into the appropriate connectors and everything seems correct.

I’m not sure what is going on, so I’m about to pull everything apart and reset the motherboard and all components in case while moving everything around I’ve managed to bump something that didn’t take kindly to the bumping.

Please don’t let it be a dead on arrival power supply or I’m going to throttle someone.

Approximately six weeks ago, the CoolerMaster 550w Extreme power supply I bought at the start of the year as part of my computer upgrade to re-establish my geek prowess decided it was a good time to start making wurring noises.

Realising that it was going to be covered by warranty, I took it back to my place of purchase expecting to have it replaced on the spot as they aren’t an expensive item. Despite the fact that the computer shop moves an incredible amount of stock, they weren’t able to replace it on the spot and it had to be sent back to the manufacturer.

No problem, so I fill in the forms to have it sent away and I’m told that I should have it repaired or replaced within about two weeks. A little over a week passes and I haven’t heard anything and then out of the blue I receive an automated email telling me that they have actually processed my power supply to be sent back to the manufacturer. At this point I was pretty annoyed, they’ve burnt up over half their suggested time frame through in-action – but we’ll move past that.

Another fortnight passes from the date that they finally processed it and still nothing, at which point I’ve now been waiting the better part of a month to have a $100 power supply replaced. I give them a call and they tell me that it has now left the manufacturer and should be back to them within a matter of days and I’ll receive another email when it arrives, excellent!

Roughly another fortnight passes and still nothing, so I called again to find out what was going on to rattle someones cage. I inevitably hear the words that I knew was going to happen from the offset – that it was in fact back with them and not to my surprise, I didn’t receive an email when they processed it again.

All in all it too between five and six weeks to have a $100 power supply replaced which they would have had in stock. I’m sure this isn’t a unique story or process in having a product returned to the manufacturer, however when you’re talking about a $100 item and not a $500 or $3000 item – the turn around times become a little hard to accept, when in the end I was given a brand new item anyway.